


Frozen

by CiaraFox



Category: Dark Matter (TV)
Genre: Blankets, Bonding, Caves, Coffee, Cold, Cooking on an Open Fire, Cuddling, Cute, Eventual Rescue, Fishing, Fluff, Huddling For Warmth, Ice Planet, Injury, Jokes, Kissing, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Making Fire, Missions Gone Wrong, On the Run, Seasonal, Sharing Body Heat, Slow Burn, Snow, Snowball Fight, Snowmen, Talking, Teasing, Wilderness Survival, hot showers, innuendos, sharing a jacket, sitting by the fire, trapped together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29615130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CiaraFox/pseuds/CiaraFox
Summary: One is trapped on a barren, icy planet with no hint of civilisation and no way to contact the Raza. But that’s not the worst part. Because Three is trapped there with him.
Relationships: One | Derrick Moss & Three | Marcus Boone, One | Derrick Moss/Three | Marcus Boone
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	Frozen

**Author's Note:**

> This image of One and Three in the snow together huddling for warmth popped into my head, and it was too cute to ignore ^_^ So since I write way too much smut, here’s 22k of pure unadulterated fluff for a change :)
> 
> This was always meant to be one big one-shot – however, like most of my writing these days, it just kept going and going, ending up a lot longer than I thought it would be! But I still wanted it to stay one unbroken story – because as One and Three are trapped in this place together for all that time, so are we :)  
> It was a random idea I started around September, but I later realised it would be a perfect cute wintery story. So I’ve been trying to finish and edit this thing for _months_ (472 hours in the doc stats!) so I could post it in time… Well, it’s still technically winter and it was snowing like a week ago here so that’s good enough xD
> 
> Let the snowy cuteness begin! ❤
> 
> (Note – I have no real world knowledge so apologies for the probably plentiful inaccuracies ^^;)

“This is your fault.”

One was not having a good time.

First, the job had completely gone to shit. It had started off as just a simple retrieval op, like a lot of their usual gigs. They were supposed to break into an Electus Corp station to steal some kind of technology they’d been developing. This station was located on an otherwise uninhabited planet. And it wasn’t a wonder as to why that was. The planet was right at the outer edges of the habitable zone of its star, meaning it was freezing. The entire planet was basically one giant, never-ending snowstorm. Everything was covered in ice and piled high with snow.

They had not been remotely prepared. They didn’t have any proper cold weather gear on the Raza, aside from their normal jackets which were only designed to keep out moderate wind chill at best. They’d had no idea how bad the visibility would be. Nor had they anticipated how much the heavy snow would mess with their comms. As soon as they were on the surface they lost all contact with the Raza. And as soon as they headed out onto the planet, they nearly lost contact with each other. Visibility was so bad they could only see about a metre in front of them. And their comm range was only slightly more than that.

It was asking for trouble. They should’ve realised that. But they pressed on.

And of course, as soon as the job was underway, everything went even more to shit. As it so often did.

When the guns started firing, they discovered another setback they hadn’t considered. The icy temperature made the metal of all their guns freeze up, making all the mechanisms incredibly stiff and a hell of a lot harder to use.

Somehow, the station workers didn’t have the same issue. Maybe they had special guns, or some kind of special treatment that stopped them freezing. But however they did it, their guns worked perfectly fine. The Raza crew’s guns, on the other hand, were verging on useless. The only one that still functioned was Bubba – because it ran off charge and didn’t have as many moving parts. But that didn’t last forever, either. That thing never had held a charge properly, and eventually, the cold started to mess with the electronics too, the battery draining even more than normal and the controls not responding – and then, like the rest, Bubba was largely useless to them too.

At that point, all they could do was run. And that was where things really went to hell. They were all legging it as fast as they were able through the deep snow, and trying to make sure they were all keeping up as best they could – but when they could only see a few feet in front of them it was virtually impossible. And they couldn’t afford to stop. Not when the station’s crew were right behind them and still firing. As well as whatever special non-freezing guns they had, they also seemed to have some kind of goggles that allowed them to see perfectly fine through the snow. Because of course they did.

Suffice it to say, One didn’t make it to the ship. And now he was stuck here, on this barren, uninhabited, icy wasteland of a planet, still on the run from the station’s men, and with absolutely no way of contacting the Raza to tell them where he was. Even if the comms would reach the ship from here, he didn’t know how he would tell them where he was when he had absolutely no idea. Everything was just white empty sameness. There were no landmarks, no points of interest he could make reference to. He was still in just his normal trousers, T-shirt and leather jacket. He had no food, no water.

Oh yeah. And there was just one more problem.

“I know I say that a lot, but it’s true – you know that? This one is actually all your fault.”

He wasn’t alone.

“You’ve basically killed us. Not even gonna apologise? What happened to your empathy and human compassion?”

He’d tried ignoring Three before. Many, many times. He knew by now there was no point. It didn’t make him stop.

“Fine. You’re right. It is my fault. What do you want me to do about it now?”

“Just wanted to hear you admit it.”

He wasn’t actually wrong, this time. It was One’s fault.

About halfway to the shuttle – he guessed, he honestly couldn’t tell – he had suddenly found himself on his face. A second later, pain lanced through his lower leg. Then came the panic. He looked up, wiping snow off his face, but all there was to see was white. He already completely lost the others, and even if he got up and carried on in the rough direction they’d been going, there was no chance of him catching them with his leg like this. Not to mention the fact that he could hear the men quickly catching up, guns still firing.

But he didn’t have time to think much more, because then something big and heavy landed on top of him.

“ _Ooof!”_

So not a chunk of ice, then. Unless it was a talking one.

“Shit!” the lump gasped. And then, “ _One!_ The fuck?!”

The lump rolled off him enough that he could see Three’s face not far from his, staring at him in a mixture of horrified shock and indignation.

“What are you doing?!” Three hissed, and One felt a rush of annoyance. He hardly chose to be down on the floor with his leg throbbing painfully beneath him, waiting to be shot and killed by some corporate assholes!

“I tripped!” he snapped back.

Three’s face slipped into a scowl.

“You idiot.”

Three started trying to get to his feet.

“Come on – we need to keep going,” he said, trying to pull One up too. But the movement sent pain stabbing into One’s leg and he bit his lip to keep from crying out.

“Fuck – Three, my leg –!”

“Screw your leg – we can deal with it on the ship!”

Three started trying to drag him along, but every step was agony, and One knew it was pointless.

“Three, it’s too late,” he said.

“No it’s not! If you’d just hurry up and _move!”_

“Three… We’re not going to make it. Not with my leg like this… They’re already miles away and I’m not even completely sure what direction it is anymore. By the time we could find the Marauder – if we even could –, they’d already be gone.”

Three stopped moving, and turned to look at him in disbelief.

“Are you kidding me?”

One shrugged apologetically.

They stood there for a moment, just looking at each other, One wincing as his leg throbbed.

“Well, what the fuck do we do, then?” Three asked.

“We… split off. Hope the men keep going after the others, or at least split their focus. And just try and get the hell out of the area,” One said. “Get to safety and then… make some kind of signal and wait for the others to find us.”

Three stared at him desperately for another moment.

“Do you have any better ideas?” One demanded.

Three sighed angrily. But clearly, he didn’t.

And so there they were. Making their way through the six-inch-deep snow as fast as they could to keep ahead of Electus’ men, Three helping One limp along on his injured leg. One supposed he should be grateful. Three could’ve just left him, and he’d have been ten times faster – maybe he _could_ have still caught up to the others and made it back to the ship. He certainly would’ve had a much easier time of putting distance between him and their pursuers. But, to his credit, he hadn’t, and he’d stayed with One and helped him, even though it could’ve just led to him getting killed sooner.

One was utterly freezing, and it was only getting worse the longer they were out here. He knew Three was in the same boat, because he could feel him shivering. The one good thing about it was that it was numbing the pain of his leg, and making it a little less of a struggle to walk.

It was still snowing, of course – it hadn’t stopped, hadn’t shown the slightest sign of letting up. And they must have been walking for at least half an hour now. No matter which direction they walked, the snow somehow seemed to blow directly into their faces, making it even harder to see. Not that there was anything _to_ see. One could just about hear the men behind them, but the sound of footfall was getting fainter. Maybe they were losing them. Or maybe they were just giving up. Either way, it was a great sign.

“They’re never going to find us,” Three said.

“They might,” One said. “We can’t be that far away from the facility. And they can do passes overhead in the Marauder.”

“But how are they going to see us through the snow?” Three pointed out. “If we can barely see each other and we’re right next to each other…”

“They’ll have lights,” One said. “And… like I said before, we can make some kind of signal.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know… smoke?”

“You think we’re gonna be able to get a fire going in this weather? Even if we can get it hot enough somehow, the wind will just blow it right back out again.”

One sighed. “Well, maybe we can find some kind of shelter. I don’t know.”

“You’d better we hope we do, Pretty Boy, or we’re gonna freeze to death before we can do anything.”

A little while later, and the noises behind them finally stopped altogether. The Electus men probably figured that they’d chased them away well enough to keep them from coming back, and there wasn’t much point in wasting time continuing to track them down when they’d likely die out here anyway. Small mercies.

Once they were sure, Three brought them to a stop. Giving a small huff, he stomped down the snow around their feet and started to lower One down to the ground.

“Should probably take a look at your leg,” he said. “Not that there’s probably all that much I can do about it out here.”

One nodded, already shivering harder than he had been before. He didn’t realise quite how much Three’s body against his side had been warming him up, until it was gone.

Three started rolling One’s trouser leg up, making One wince as the material scraped over the injury.

“Ouch,” Three said.

One looked down, and laid eyes on the source of the pain – the jagged gashes on his lower left shin. They weren’t bleeding much, nor were they that deep. But they stung a lot, like a mesh of paper cuts, and the surrounding area was starting to darken with bruising.

“Could’ve been worse,” said Three. “Probably a rock or a lump of ice you tripped over. I don’t think it’s broken.”

One gave a weak nod in agreement. “Don’t think I could’ve walked that far on it if it was.”

“Good for us,” Three said. “Don’t think you’re in danger of bleeding out either. A chance it could get infected, without the proper equipment to treat it. But mostly it’s just gonna hurt like a bastard.”

“Sounds about right,” One said shakily.

Three pondered for a moment, then dug a hand into the snow, coming up with a handful. He balled it up in his grip until it was closer to solid.

“I’m gonna try and clean it a little with this,” he told One. “It’s probably gonna suck.”

One felt a prickle of apprehension run through him, but tried not to show it, and just nodded again.

Three kept the snow in his hand until it started to melt, and then he pressed the watery ice to One’s wound. One couldn’t hold back his cry this time. Three winced with him, but kept going until he’d washed the wound out as best he could.

One lay there shaking until the piercing pain started to die again. Though it never fully went away, and the dull throbbing ache was horrible in a different way. He wondered how bad it would be if he wasn’t half-numb from cold.

“Come on,” Three said, rolling One’s trouser leg back down and starting to help him back to his feet. “We need to keep looking for some kind of shelter, or you’re gonna have much bigger problems than that leg.”

They kept going, even when both of them were barely able to walk straight for how much they were shaking. One’s hands felt like they weren’t even part of him anymore, his face burning with cold fire.

“What if we don’t find anything?” One said. He didn’t want to be pessimistic but… they had seen nothing close to any kind of shelter so far. What if there was nothing anywhere? What if they just kept walking through the snow forever and the others never found them and they just died?

“There has to be something,” Three said, through what sounded like gritted teeth. “This whole planet can’t just be one giant, featureless ball of ice, right?”

One didn’t respond. Because what if it was?

“Look – you tripped over something back there,” said Three. “It was probably a rock, which means there are rocks here – and if there are rocks, there are bigger rocks, and if there are bigger rocks, there’s bound to be cliffs and caves.”

One just nodded. But he was struggling to keep up that kind of hope. Fear was taking over everything, even more than the cold.

“We’ll be okay,” Three said quietly.

And if One wasn’t mistaken, his arm tightened a little around him.

One lost track of how long they walked. The only way he had of telling the time passing was from how increasingly cold he got. At first his whole body ached with it, his skin stinging like he had been submerged in acid. He felt as brittle as glass, like the slightest touch to his skin would break through to the flesh beneath. His lips were already cracked and it felt like the rest of him was on the way to following suit. From there, he became so numb that all of his body parts felt like they didn’t belong to him anymore. His whole being was heavy, like he was dragging around a tonne of rock behind him. Three’s supporting arms around him were one of the only things that kept him walking forward.

Eventually, they started to see the occasional tree – dead-looking, skeletal shapes through the whiteness. And then the odd hunched, withered bush poking through the snow. But that felt at least a little comforting. There was some life in this place, even if it was struggling just as much as they were.

After a little while longer, as another tree came up ahead of them, Three huffed and steered them towards it.

“Think we need to rest,” he said gruffly as he did, his face red and raw-looking from the bitter wind. “If we keep going like this much longer we’re just gonna pass out from exhaustion and get buried in the snow. And it’s already getting pretty dark.”

One inwardly thanked god – he hadn’t wanted to suggest it and be made fun of for giving in or being weak, but he felt like he was about another ten steps away from his legs falling off.

Outwardly, he just nodded, too cold to even try speaking.

Once they reached the tree, they cleared a space in the snow and lowered themselves gingerly to the ground, leaning back against the trunk on the side facing away from the wind. It didn’t do a huge amount to shelter them from the elements, but it was better than nothing. Neither of them really expected to get any actual sleep, but they at least had to try and rest in whatever way they could. They sat close together, their arms and sides touching, knees drawn up to their chests to try and preserve what little body heat they had left. One kind of wanted to lean into Three more, as the only source of anything close to warmth around here, but that would be pretty weird, and he didn’t want to push his luck. Three might actually decide to ditch him if he started being all touchy-feely.

So they just stayed like that, huddled next to each other and leaning back into the tree, closing their eyes as they tried and failed to get something approaching sleep. It didn’t really happen, still out in the open in the snow as they were; they drifted in and out of some kind of shallow unconsciousness for a few hours, while the wind still howled and snow piled up around them. Their heads eventually drooped together so that when he next stirred, One realised they were in almost the same position they’d ended up in when they were running out of oxygen on that ship full of disease-infested crazies. Only this time neither of them cared about moving.

After a few hours or so, they forced themselves up, before they just completely froze against the tree. For another indeterminately long while, they pushed on, until they couldn’t take anymore and stopped again against another tree for another few hours of broken, uncomfortable not-sleep.

When they next got up to carry on moving, the sky was starting to lighten slightly, the snowflakes less of a contrast against the indigo sky. One just prayed this day would yield at least minor results in terms of finding actual shelter, because he didn’t think either of them could stand this much longer.

Thankfully, their persistence eventually paid off. After yet more hours of walking – One had no idea how long exactly –, the trees and bushes started to get more plentiful, which was a good sign for a start. Then, on their left-hand side, they started to see a break in the white emptiness. A slightly darker shape looming through the snow – and a fairly big one, too, stretching across their view like an unbroken wall. Moments after changing direction and they were right in front of it. It was a cliff face – not too tall, only about fifteen feet. But it looked like a pretty good bet for finding some kind of cave to shelter in. One and Three looked at each other, both smiling hopefully.

They sat down against the base of the cliff for a little while, just to catch their breath and let their legs rest a bit, the wall and the trees offering much better shelter than they’d had so far. Then, when they were ready, they started following the cliff. They were getting slower and slower as the cold sapped all the energy from their muscles. They were both close to fully collapsing. But finally, they found it – a break in the endless wall where the rock receded away into the cliff, with a few trees gathered around the opening. They grinned weakly at each other.

“Here we go!” Three said excitedly.

They headed swiftly into the entrance of what they hoped would be a cave deep enough to make a proper shelter from the cold and the wind. And thankfully, they were in luck. It wasn’t massive – only a couple of metres square, but more than enough for the two of them to fit in, crouching or lying. And the narrower entrance helped to keep out the worst of the elements, making it a damn sight more appealing than outside.

“Thank fuck,” said Three in deep relief, helping One down to the floor and then swinging Bubba off his shoulder before sitting down next to him, propping the gun against the wall.

They just sat there for a while, legs curled up to their chests as they tried to recover at least a little bit of their body heat and their depleted strength.

“Now what?” Three said eventually.

It took One’s half-frozen brain a little while to process the words, and then another to come up with the answer.

“We… I guess we try and find something t-to… start a fire. If we can.”

Three nodded slowly.

“I’ll go have a look,” he said. “You stay here.”

And before One could protest, he got up and crawled back to the entrance of the cave.

One couldn’t deny he felt a little guilty, making Three go out there again while he just sat here. But primarily, he was just extremely grateful. Three did seem to be managing the cold slightly better than he was. Plus, he wasn’t going to be much help hobbling on his bad leg.

Three stayed at the entrance to start with, just digging down under the snow to look for sticks they could use as kindling. He found a few. Then he moved out to look for more.

A few minutes later, he returned with an armful of icy sticks. He’d also broken some smaller trigs off the bushes that would hopefully catch easier and help the rest of the fire along. He lay them down next to the others.

“Hopefully that’ll do for now,” he said, voice shaking a little. “But I don’t know how well they’ll catch when they’re basically fr-frozen.”

As he sat down again, shivering more than he had been, One managed a weak, “Thank you.”

Three glanced at him, looking a little surprised, and then he just nodded in acknowledgement.

“Now… we t-try and find a way to light them,” One said.

Three nodded. “I have an idea for that.”

He pulled one of his guns out of the holster, then ejected the magazine and slid out one of the bullets. He put it down on the floor, then used the handle of the gun to bash it into the ground, causing the case to bust open after a few hits. He picked up the now broken shell case and tipped it a little into his hand; some of the black propellant spilled into it.

One nodded as he understood. “Nice.”

“Now we just need to make a spark,” Three said. “If the wood’s gonna catch, this oughta help it along.”

Determined not to be entirely useless, One got weakly up to help Three arrange the sticks just outside the entrance to their cave, with the larger sticks propped up in a cone shape around the smaller sticks. Then Three sprinkled the powder over them, before taking a couple of powder-covered sticks and starting to strike them against each other, trying to create a spark.

At least half an hour later, no luck.

Three sighed. “This is going well.”

One nodded gloomily. He took the sticks to try for a bit, but he wasn’t much more successful.

They kept trying for a while longer, until their fingers were almost entirely numb. And then, finally, they got a spark. The propellant caught, and then fire flamed to life, crackling over the sticks. One and Three watched hopefully, praying that the wood caught. But within a few seconds, the fast-burning powder burnt out, and the fire died. They both sighed.

“Another bullet?” One suggested.

So they tried again, until eventually they got another spark. And it looked like the wood might actually catch – but then the wind picked up even more and almost instantly whisked the flames away.

“Fuck,” Three muttered.

“Maybe we should put this on hold for now,” One said kind of weakly. “I’m getting really hungry.”

“Yeah, me too,” Three admitted.

Both of their stomachs had been grumbling for most of the day, having not had anything to fill them since lunchtime the previous day. It was starting to get really painful.

“I didn’t see any animals, though,” One said, a little worriedly, “or any vegetation we could eat, in the whole of yesterday and today.”

Three nodded grimly. “Same here.”

There was a slightly tense pause.

“Well, there’s gotta be something,” Three said eventually.

One wasn’t sure that was true. But he tried to get up that same hope.

Three slapped his hands on his legs. “Come on, then – let’s go have a look around before it gets dark,” he said, starting to get to his feet. Then he reached a hand down to help pull One up. Once they were both standing, though, Three frowned a little. “Though… what if we lose the cave?”

One thought for a second. “I guess we’ll just have to stay close to the cliff edge,” he said. “And if we need to go further out, one of us can stay by it and we can call out to each other to make sure we don’t lose each other.”

Three nodded. “Right. Like Marco Polo.”

One gave a weak smile. “Exactly.”

As they started to head off, continuing in the direction they’d come from, Three walked off at his normal pace for the first few steps, forgetting that One was kind of hobbled. But he quickly remembered and turned back guiltily.

“Shit, sorry,” he muttered, coming back and wrapping his arm around One again. Then he frowned as they started walking again together. “You gonna be okay walking on that leg even more?”

One nodded, even though it hurt like hell and he wanted more than anything to go and sit back down inside the cave. He wasn’t going to let Three do all this on his own. And he didn’t really want to be left on his own either, frankly.

“It’ll be fine,” he said reassuringly.

So they carried on, slowly moving along the cliff wall and keeping an eye out as they went for any animals or slightly more thriving plants that could work as food. It was extremely slow going, and even more extremely boring. Not to mention cold. And painful for One, walking on his leg. But that was pretty much a given.

They didn’t talk much, mostly because they were too cold and hungry, and trying to conserve what little energy they had. But One found it a surprisingly big comfort just having Three there. When Three occasionally moved away from the cliff to look further afield (One taking the opportunity to lean against the wall and rest his leg), they kept in contact by shouting for each other every so often. But even that much time alone in this horrible, miserable place started to get to One. He was very thankful that Three never spent too long away before returning to the wall, and to him.

But even after what had to be an hour or two of walking, they didn’t find anything. They saw no sign of any animals, big or small. The only plant life around was the leafless trees and bushes, none of which showed any sign of bearing any fruit or berries or edible greenery of any kind.

In the end, they had to give up. One’s leg was really starting to get bad, and they still had to get all the way back to the cave before he could finally rest it properly. Three offered to keep looking while One went back, but he said no – he still felt bad making Three go off and do everything, and besides, he wasn’t sure he could make it back by himself. They could just carry on looking in the morning.

So they went back together. It took a while longer, with One having to lean a lot heavier on Three and practically hop at this point, but finally they reached the cave again, and Three helped One sit gratefully down on the floor, gingerly stretching his leg out in front of him.

They worked on the fire a bit more, for lack of anything better to do. But they still weren’t having any luck in that area either. And they’d already used up most of the day at that point anyway.

“It’s getting dark,” One finally said, wearily. “If we don’t get it to light soon there won’t be any p-point – they’d never see anything in the dark. We might as well g-go to sleep and try again in the morning.”

Three nodded dispiritedly. “We’ll wanna use the bullets sparingly too. Only got so many.”

That was a very good point. One hadn’t even thought of that…

They tried for a little longer, but soon, as One had said, it was too dark for there to be any point. Even if they did get a fire going, it would be virtually impossible for the others to see the smoke. And though the warmth would be nice too, they were more interested in getting inside out of the wind and snow at this point, and trying to get some rest. Freezing, tired and miserable, they brought the sticks back into the cave, so that they might have got a bit less icy by the morning and have more chance of catching light. Then, they just had to lie down on the hard, cold rock floor and try and find some way of sleeping.

Looking at that oh-so-enticing floor, Three sighed.

“This is going to be fun,” he said disdainfully.

He sat down with a dejected slump. One watched, feeling a swell of guilt in his stomach.

“I’m sorry.”

Three looked at him, frowning. “What?”

One sighed. “I’m sorry. For getting us stuck here.”

Three raised an eyebrow. “Oh, _now_ you’re apologising? ‘Bout time.”

One sighed again as he sat down, too. “Yeah. Fine. I suck.”

“Damn right.”

One lay down despondently on his side of the cave.

After a moment, Three said, “One, you tripped over something you had no way of seeing because there was absolutely zero visibility _and_ it was buried under about a foot of snow. And then I fell over you because _I_ couldn’t see anything, either. I was just being an ass.”

One took that in for a moment. Sounded like Three was saying it wasn’t his fault, after all that.

“Well, still,” he said. He paused. “Though… I have to say… I’m glad you’re here,” he muttered.

“Oh really? Thought I’d be the last person you’d want to be stuck on some deserted ice planet with.”

“I’m glad I’m not alone,” One clarified. “If I was… I don’t think I’d have made it half this far.”

Three paused for a moment before replying. “So you’re glad that you tripped me up and got me trapped here waiting to die too, just to make _you_ feel better? Gee, what an altruist you are!”

One sighed again, but a second later he heard Three laughing softly, and realised he was just joking around. Undeniably a little relieved, he rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m taking a leaf out of your book and giving the whole only-thinking-about-yourself thing a try,” he joked back.

Three looked over at him and scoffed dismissively – but it was quite clearly in good spirits.

“Pah, you wouldn’t have what it takes,” he told him. “No way would you be able to make it in a place like this without someone to help you along – you’re right about that. I’d do fine on my own, though. Not relying on anyone else is an art.”

One snorted a little. “An art, huh?”

“Damn straight.”

One couldn’t help laughing, and when he looked at Three he saw him grinning in the darkness.

“You’re definitely the master of that,” he allowed. He didn’t add the second half of what he was thinking – that that was likely down to the fact that no one would _offer_ to help such a cocky asshole, so he had no choice but to master helping himself. He just let it be implied in his tone and facial expression.

Three just grinned more. “I know,” he said, with over-exaggerated arrogance – either missing the insinuation entirely or choosing to pretend it wasn’t there.

They both laughed quietly for a moment, the atmosphere warm and amicable.

“Well… guess we’d better try and sleep,” Three said, and One nodded. “Though I’m not at all sure it’s going to be possible.”

An hour or two later, One found that he was right. He was still lying there, shivering and hurting and totally unable to drift off. There was basically no way he could. He couldn’t relax enough to even get close. Of course, it was a hell of a lot nicer in here than it was out in the open, in the snow and the wind, which he could hear whistling past the cave opening, the odd scatter of snowflakes drifting inside with it. But it was hardly a nice, cosy, central-heated room. It was still freezing, the cold of the stone floor sapping any warmth his body produced almost straight away. His whole body was aching from the shivering. And that wasn’t even including his still-throbbing leg, or the painful hardness of the ground digging into him no matter what position he lay in. They had taken off their gun belts to try and make it as comfortable as possible, but it didn’t help much.

He sighed loudly and shudderingly. He wondered if Three was having the same problem. Judging by the ragged breathing noises and rustling he could hear, it was a good bet he was.

One opened his eyes. It was pretty much pitch black now, but he could just about make out the dark, shaking shape of Three a few feet in front of him.

“This is the worst.”

One paused, having not expected Three to say anything.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “N-never g-gonna get to sleep.”

“Me neither,” Three said. “Damn, I wish I’d worn more c-clothes…”

They both trailed off into shivering silence.

One couldn’t help thinking about body heat. And how they’d both probably be a lot better off if they shared it. Kinda like they’d been doing before, leaning into each other against the trees, but more. He was sure that was a thing in survival situations. But how the hell could he suggest that to Three?

After a few more minutes, Three gave a huge shudder and weakly groaned, “ _Ffffuck_ …”

And One decided to take the plunge. The worst Three could do was have one more thing to make fun of him about, and he already had plenty. But if he decided to put his sense before his pride, they’d both have a chance of warming up a little and maybe getting some actual sleep.

“Three…” He swallowed awkwardly.

“Yeah?”

One hesitated, embarrassment already mounting.

“What?”

“I was just thinking…” God, this was awkward. “Maybe, to keep us both from freezing… I mean, I think I’ve heard… you know, in this kind of situation people usually talk about, um… ‘sharing body heat’…”

Three didn’t answer for a second, and One braced himself for the scathing mockery he was about to receive.

Then Three just sighed.

“I was thinking about that too,” he admitted.

They both lay there awkwardly for another few moments, One too embarrassed to make any further move or say anything else.

“Well, get over here, then,” Three said.

One swallowed nervously, part of him wondering what the hell he was even thinking. Knowing Three, he was probably just pretending to be all sensible and understanding, so that when they got back to the ship he could tell everyone all about how wimpy and girly One was, asking Three to cuddle him in the night for ‘body heat’. But he did what he said after a moment, shuffling closer to the other man. It was still extremely hard to see, but when he was close enough he could just about make out Three’s face.

He didn’t close the gap at first, at a complete loss. How were they going to do this? Face to face? Spooning?

Before he could move, or ask, or just scrap the idea and brave the cold alone, Three shifted forward, closing the small space between them, and pulling One against him. One felt a shiver go through him that had nothing to do with the cold.

“God – One, you’re even more freezing than me!”

Three wrapped his arms fully around him, the whole front of their bodies pressed together. He was right – he wasn’t exactly warm, but he was certainly more so than One was. One’s face was over Three’s shoulder and he could feel the warmth of Three’s cheek against his.

“Jeeze. You need to get some more meat on you,” Three said. “So this is why you wanted to ‘share body heat’, huh? Because you wanted to steal all of mine?”

One chuckled weakly.

“Well, it’s hardly fair for you to hog it all,” he teased. “With you being so much more… well-insulated, and all.”

“Oi!” One laughed a little more earnestly at Three’s indignation. “Watch it, Pretty Boy, or I’ll send you back over there to freeze by yourself!”

“I just meant, you know, because you’re so much more burly and muscular!”

“Better have done!”

One snickered quietly.

They just lay there for a while, both still shivering – but eventually, the heat sharing began to work, and they both started to warm up a little. Not massively, but enough that they could finally relax and stop shaking as much. At that point, Three sighed in relief.

“That’s better,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” One agreed.

There was another short silence, and then Three started to laugh.

“What?” One wondered.

“Just thinking…” He chuckled some more. “With this body heat thing, there’s something else people usually say, isn’t there?”

One thought for a bit, but couldn’t figure out what he meant.

“What?”

Three kept chortling. “That apparently it works a lot better… skin to skin.”

One felt another tingle inside.

“What d’you think, Pretty Boy? Wanna get our clothes off?”

One froze in shock, until Three laughed some more.

“Think I’ll pass,” One said quickly, hoping for derision. “I’m not that desperate yet.”

“Alright, if you say so… Let me know if you change your mind.”

His laughter trailed off into amused silence. Meanwhile One tried to ignore the strange tingliness that had overtaken him at the words, and their implication.

Lying there against each other, keeping each other warm, they finally started to feel the pull of sleep tugging at them. One moved his head back slightly, so that he was no longer holding it up and could lay it down on the floor. A few moments later, he was asleep.

One woke some hours later in more or less the same position, with a few minor differences. He was still lying against Three, with their chests and stomachs and legs pressed together. Three’s arms were encircling him, while One’s arms were tucked up between their bodies, pressed against Three’s chest. The slight differences were that their foreheads and noses were also touching now, and one of Three’s legs had moved to rest on top of One’s.

It was about as warm as it was possible to get. And it was pretty comfy, too, even on the rock hard ground. One didn’t move for a while, just enjoying it.

But soon Three woke up as well. Like One, he didn’t move at first, but eventually he sighed a little and shifted his head back enough to see One.

“Not the most comfortable night’s sleep ever but… at least it was something,” he said.

“Yeah,” One agreed.

They slowly, reluctantly started to detangle themselves.

“Hate to admit it but… the body heat sharing definitely made a difference,” Three added.

One nodded. “Yeah… Don’t think we would’ve managed anything without that. And even if we could have, it would’ve been nowhere near as good.”

Three smirked a little, and One swallowed slightly as he realised what that sounded like.

“Glad you enjoyed, Pretty Boy. But you could’ve bought me dinner first before using me like that.”

One managed a weak scowl, and Three grinned back.

They both sat up, and One immediately felt a thousand times colder than he had been. The loss of Three’s warm body was very keenly felt. He was also starting to feel the dull throbbing of his injured leg more and more. Not to mention the hollow, gnawing ache of his empty stomach.

“Well, I guess first things first, we need to keep looking for food,” Three said.

One nodded instantly. “Yeah. I’m starving.”

“Me too.”

Three grimaced as he rubbed his stomach.

“And after that… any new ideas, or do we just carry on yesterday’s smoke signal plan?” Three wondered.

“Guess we carry on,” One said. “If we do find food then we can try and cook it as well. And if we still don’t find anything… well, then the fire’s even more important.”

Three looked grim as he realised what he meant by that.

“Right,” he agreed. He stood up, stretching his no-doubt aching arms. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I need to take a whiz before we do anything.”

Incidentally, One did also.

So Three stepped outside the cave to relieve himself, and then One did the same. Seeing him limping a little as he came back in, Three frowned.

“Hey – let me look at your leg before we go out there,” he said.

One nodded weakly, sitting down and wincing as he started to roll up his trouser leg to just below his knee. Three leant over to take a look at the wound, which thankfully didn’t look infected or anything. Three’s cleaning with the snowmelt had done a good job. The whole lower part of his leg was starting to become purple with bruising, but the cuts weren’t bleeding and were starting to scab over slightly at least. Three gave a small nod, pleased.

“Looks alright,” he said. “I’m sure it’ll still be damn painful for a while, but it’s healing up well.”

“Yeah, definitely could’ve been worse,” One agreed, gingerly lowering his trouser leg again. “I should be able to walk on it okay. Though it’s not going to be the most fun.”

Three nodded, looking a little sympathetic. “Yeah… Well, come on then. Let’s get moving. At least the cold might help with the pain a bit.”

He was right about that, which was about the only good thing about the awful weather on this planet. They set off once again, going in the other direction from their last search, back the way they’d come along the wall initially. They knew there was nothing that way for a while, but maybe if they kept going they’d find something.

Three helped One along as he had been doing the rest of the time, but thankfully his leg did feel slightly better, so he didn’t have to rely on him as heavily. They paused every so often to dig under the snow for sticks as they went, to supplement their firewood pile. If they couldn’t find food, they were going to need as many chances as possible to get a fire going, to give the others the best possible chance of find them.

Gradually, as they looked for signs of living things (to no avail), they gathered up more wood, bringing one load back to put inside the cave when it became too much to easily carry. Sometimes Three would go further away from the wall, as he had before, but for slightly longer periods now that One was able to get on better on his own. One did start to get a little worried sometimes, when he took a while – but he always came back. And One was always so relieved when he did, even when he came back empty-handed. More than ever he was glad Three was with him. If he’d been alone, he probably would’ve given up a long time ago.

Eventually, they found something promising. And they found it by One slipping and falling flat on his butt.

He was too cold to even say, ‘ow’, just winced as he slammed into the frozen ground, then sat there breathing hard. Three heard the _thump_ and turned, and then his expression became both amused and concerned.

“You okay down there?” he asked. “What happened?”

“I dunno,” One said weakly. “I slipped.”

Three chuckled a little, holding out a hand for him to take. One did, and used a worrying amount of Three’s strength to pull himself up. Thankfully, he hadn’t landed on his leg and made that even worse.

“Jeeze, you’re always so cold,” Three said, holding onto One’s hand. One felt his throat dry up a little. Three then grabbed his other hand and held them together between his, rubbing back and forth to try and coax some warmth back into them. Incidentally, One suddenly found some warmth coming from somewhere – but inside, in his chest and deep in his belly. “What do you do, just instantly use up all your heat in fuelling those big important feelings of yours?”

One just shrugged, feeling a little awkward, but pleasantly dazed by Three’s touch.

“You’d actually have just turned into an icicle if I wasn’t here, wouldn’t you?” Three said.

“Probably,” One said, the warm tingles spreading through his body.

When his hands had warmed up a little, Three let go of them, and One instantly missed the touch.

Three crouched down and started digging under the snow.

“Huh,” he said.

One looked down, and saw that he had discovered the reason he’d slipped. Under the snow was a thick patch of ice. And it wasn’t just iced-over ground. It was what looked like a pond or small lake, with trees dotted around the edge. In fact, as they looked, they saw a fish swim past.

Three looked up at One and grinned.

“Looks like food,” he said.

It was certainly looking positive. The only trouble was going to be catching it. Getting through the ice was pretty easy. They just cleared enough of the snow that they could see the edge of the pond, and made sure they were standing on the solid ground outside it. Then Three got out one of his guns. They still weren’t working great in the cold, but after a few tries he managed to get a shot off, and the ice splintered, the small bullet hole creating cracks webbing out from it. Then Three kicked at the fractured ice, breaking off chunks until there was a nice hole into the water.

Three crouched down at the edge of the pond, and dipped his hand into the water – then swore loudly.

“Jesus, that’s cold!”

One gave a quiet laugh. “What a surprise,” he teased, making Three look up and glare at him.

Steeling himself and gritting his teeth, Three leant down again, this time cupping his hands and scooping up a handful of water, which he then brought to his lips. He drank it quickly, wincing at the cold, before bringing up another handful and gulping that down too.

He looked back up at One.

“It’ll send your balls back inside your body for the next month, but we’ve gotta drink something, right?”

One chortled. He knelt down next to the pond, cupped his hands like Three had and submerged them, gasping at the painful, icy cold. He drank the freezing water out of his hand, and instantly his teeth were aching. After the second handful, his head hurt too, like the worst ever brain freeze.

They both sat there and recovered for a moment. Then it was on to the main reason for breaking the ice. And that, unfortunately, was the hard part. They didn’t have anything to use as a fishing rod or bait. All they did have was sticks and the knife Three kept in his boot. So, they sat at the edge of the pond while Three whittled the end of one of the sticks into a spike. In the meantime One discovered that sitting down was _so_ much colder than moving and walking and digging. He was soon shivering uncontrollably, knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around them.

Three soon noticed and gave him a weary look.

“Man, you’re really asking for it, huh, Pretty Boy,” he said in exasperated amusement.

With an over-the-top sigh, he put the stick and knife down and started to take off his jacket. One watched with widened eyes.

“What are you…”

He trailed off as Three leaned over and draped the jacket over his shoulders, then helped him get his arms inside. It was a little too big, the sleeves hanging down over One’s hands a bit. But at least that gave them some protection from the cold. Three was now in just his navy long-sleeved top, and it didn’t look hugely insulating.

“Three… you’re g-gonna fr-freeze,” One said guiltily.

“Nah,” Three said dismissively. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got sleeves. Bet you’re just wearing a T-shirt under there, aren’t you?”

Feeling a little sheepish, One said, “I didn’t have any long-sleeved things on the ship.”

“Well, luckily my past self had the sense to pack for more varied weathers,” Three teased. Seeing One still looking worried, he added, “I’ll be fine, I swear. Like you said, I’ve got a good amount more padding.”

As One’s expression shifted back to guilty, Three just laughed. “Hey, it’s true – and you getting colder so much quicker shows that. Besides, being all big and tough and muscular is not a bad thing.”

He grinned smugly, and One managed a little chuckle.

“It’s fine, One,” Three assured him. “Don’t worry.”

He carried on chipping at the stick while One sat there, warmer in Three’s leather jacket as well as his own, and still feeling guilty, but mostly happy and flattered and really grateful. He had certainly not expected Three to be so… well, there was no other word for it: chivalrous. Normally Three always put himself first – and with One, whom he actively disliked, he would surely never have considered doing something nice for him that directly harmed himself. But… he had, without being asked – without even a thought. He was definitely not quite what One had thought.

Soon enough, Three had carved the end of the stick into a sharp point, and he handed it to One, while he kept the knife. Then the waiting game began. Every time a fish swam by, they stabbed at it with knife and stick, trying to spear it. They were both pretty awful. After at least ten appallingly bad failed attempts, they both looked at each other and just had to laugh.

“Don’t think we’re natural fishermen,” One said, making Three chortle more.

“Not exactly,” Three agreed.

But they kept going. And eventually, they started to get closer. After a couple of really close calls, Three finally managed to get one, stabbing into it with his knife and pulling it out of the water, then quickly chopping off its head. They both grimaced as they looked down at it twitching on the ground before falling still, blood pooling. But as they looked at each other, it was clear they both knew it was for the best. No point letting it die slowly and suffer. And if they didn’t eat, they’d be the ones dying slowly instead.

Things picked up a little after that. Three got a couple more fish, and then One managed to get one, passing it quickly to Three so he could dispatch it. They kept at it, and they were there for a while. Three was soon shivering more than a little, and One, feeling increasingly guilty, asked more than once if he wanted his jacket back – but Three always said he was fine, One needed it more. And One couldn’t help feeling more and more grateful and appreciative towards him.

After another couple of hours, they had a good pile of fish collected up between them.

“That oughta keep us going for a while,” Three said, smiling at One. “You alright to take the fish and I’ll take the wood?”

One nodded. “Sure.”

Three helped him gather up the fish, holding them in his arms like a cradle. One worried about getting blood on Three’s jacket, but Three pointed out that it wasn’t close to the first, between him shooting people and being injured himself. He looked amused by One’s continued fretting, which made One a little embarrassed, but he couldn’t help it. It felt like Three was sacrificing so much for him. And after he basically got them stuck here… It was really unusual for Three, and therefore really confusing. But… in a nice way. Definitely a nice way.

Once One had all the fish securely in his arms, he started to head back slowly to the cave, trying not to drop any, while Three followed behind with the rest of the wood they’d gathered on the way. It took a little while to get back from where they’d found the pond. One had no idea what the time was of course but he was starting to worry about how much daylight they had left. They still had to try and get a fire going, and if they didn’t get it done before dark the others would have no chance of seeing it.

When they reached the cave, he put the fish down not far from the entrance, while Three went inside the cave to put the wood down in there with the rest from the day. When he came back out, he was carrying last night’s pile of sticks with him, to stack up in front of the cave once more. Thankfully, they did seem to have de-iced from the time in the cave overnight, and it wasn’t snowing too heavily at that moment, so they had much more of a chance.

The first hour or two passed similarly to the previous day, with regards to their fire-starting luck. When they did eventually get the powder to light, it would burn out too fast or get blown away by the wind before the wood had a chance to catch.

Then, finally, they had a bit of luck. On about the third bullet’s worth of propellant of the day, the larger sticks finally started to catch. One and Three both gasped when they did, then exchanged an amused grin at their over-exaggerated reactions.

But it didn’t go so well after that. The fire persisted for a little while, but it never got much bigger than a small plume, and the smoke it produced was pretty minimal.

“No one’s gonna see that,” Three said.

“No,” One agreed sadly.

And a short while later, it died again. They both sighed.

“Well, we’re gonna need more firewood now,” Three said. “Probably a lot more, by the looks of it, if we want to have any chance of making enough smoke.”

One nodded. “Hopefully the wood we got earlier has had time to unfreeze a little.”

So, together, they brought out the other bundles of sticks from earlier, adding them to the current, slightly charred pile. As Three arranged the last few sticks on top, One saw him shivering, and felt another twinge of guilt.

“Do you want your jacket back?” he asked, for possibly the millionth time.

Three gave him an amused smile. “I’m fine,” he said. He reached over to touch a hand to One’s cheek, and sure enough, somehow, he was still slightly warmer than One was. “You need it more, you living block of ice.”

One chuckled, trying to ignore the tingly feeling that spread from Three’s hand on his face.

After Three had finished arranging the rest of the firewood on the larger pile they had made, the result was a pretty decent looking campfire.

“If we can get this going, we’ll be in business,” Three said, looking pleased. “And we better, because I’m fucking starving. And I don’t really fancy eating raw fish.”

“Me neither,” One agreed. “Cooking the fish might add to the smoke too.”

Three nodded. “Let’s give it a shot.”

So they cracked open another bullet and added the propellant to the pile of wood, and resumed working on the fire once more. The weather was still pretty awful, the constant snowing having not decided to let up at any point, but the wind wasn’t as bad as it had been at other times so that ought to help a bit. Sure enough, after only one failed attempt, they managed to get the fire to light and stay lit, and as it spread to the sticks further out in the pile, One and Three exchanged a hopeful look.

“Come on, come on,” Three muttered.

They watched and prayed for the fire to take. And for once, they seemed to be in luck. More and more of the sticks were catching and none of them seemed to be going back out. Within a few minutes, they had a pretty good fire going, creating a strong plume of smoke.

Three turned and grinned at One, leaning over and giving him a friendly punch on the arm. “That’s more like it!”

One laughed in relief. “Yeah. Let’s get cooking.”

First things first, Three took out his boot knife again and started to skin the fish. Neither of them had any remote idea how to do it properly, or how to bone the fish or anything – so they weren’t in for the most tasty meal. But they could at least get the scaly skin off as best they could.

Soon, they had a few of the fish skinned, and One picked up one of the spare sticks, which Three had carved into spikes while they waited for the fire, and skewered them on it. Then he held them out over the fire, turning every so often like a spit-roast.

They soon had a good system going. One would cook the first batch of fish over the fire while Three worked on skinning the next few. Then once the first fish were done, they’d start eating those while they each worked on cooking and preparing the next lot. It worked really well. And even though the fish were bony as all hell, they were both so hungry they didn’t really care. And the flesh did taste nice in and of itself. All in all, sitting there next to the warming fire with Three, munching their way through the fish and chatting about anything they could think of… it was a pretty nice evening.

It wasn’t long until it was too dark for the smoke to be of much use, and they’d still seen no sign of any rescue party. But they stayed there anyway, polishing off the last bits of fish and enjoying the warmth of the fire. And, to be honest, each other’s company.

“Now this is much better,” Three said happily, leaning back on the wall of the cliff with his arms behind his head. “Full bellies, a nice warm fire. Not being shot at by pissed off Electus men. Yeah, I can get on board with this.”

One smiled a little. “Yeah,” he agreed, nibbling on the last of his fish bones. “Me too.”

“Not to say that I don’t hope we get rescued, of course,” Three added.

Chuckling, One said, “Yeah – I won’t be signing up to live here for the rest of our lives just yet. But… at least it’s liveable, now.”

Three nodded, grinning. “You should take a little longer before you freeze solid, with all this fire,” he added.

One gave a sheepish laugh.

“How _are_ you doing, temperature-wise?” Three asked. And he sat forward and leaned over to touch One’s face again, making him jump slightly. Three’s touch still sent a strange thrill through him. “Look at that – you’re actually a somewhat normal temperature!” Three said with very exaggerated excitement. “Congratulations, One!”

One snickered. “Thanks,” he said, acting like it really was an achievement to be proud of.

“Now, does this mean I can _finally_ have my jacket back?” Three asked, giving him a penetrating look.

One grimaced guiltily. He’d totally forgotten he’d been wearing it all this time.

But Three just laughed at his expression.

“I’m just kidding,” he said, grinning at One. “You can keep it. I’m doing fine – especially with the fire.”

One nodded, but he still felt a little chagrined. He was also still really flattered, though. And he had to admit, he was rather enjoying the extra warmth of Three’s jacket on top of his own, and the fire. It was almost cosy, even with the snow still falling around them.

They carried on relaxing next to the fire, enjoying the comforting warmth. Neither of them really wanted to move. It was comfortable here, and anywhere else they were just going to get cold again.

After a little while, One voiced something he couldn’t stop thinking about.

“What if they never come?”

Three looked at him quizzically. “What?”

“What if they never come for us?” One said quietly. “Or they can’t find us. What’s going to happen then?”

Three frowned. “They will,” he said. “They’re not just going to leave us here. We’re part of the Raza crew! That’s not how we roll. Besides, they wouldn’t be able to function with us.”

One raised an eyebrow. “They wouldn’t?”

“Course not! Without me to make all the hard decisions and piss everyone off, and you to advocate for the lives of all the little puppies and kittens – they wouldn’t stand a chance!”

One couldn’t help cracking a laugh at that. But his fears were still very loud in his head, and that didn’t drown them out for long.

“But… managing to find one tiny puff of smoke in all this snow… It was all I could think of and yet now I’m pretty sure it has next to no chance of doing anything. And if we’re stuck here… forever…”

Three sat up straighter to give him a firm look.

“Hey – we’re gonna be fine,” he said. “They’ll come for us. They’ll find a way. Five and the android will reconfigure the scanners until they’re able to detect the slightest trace of body heat from fifty light years away or some bullshit like that.”

One chuckled weakly. “They are pretty good at stuff like that…”

“Yeah, they are. You know they’ll figure something out. And hell, even if they don’t… we’ll be okay,” Three said confidently. “We’ve found shelter. We’ve found a source of food and water now. And if we’ve managed to make fire once we can do it again. So we’re not going to freeze or starve. Sure, it’s not the most fun place to live, but we’ll make it work. And if worst comes to worst, we can find our way back to that station, and beg them not to kill us, and see if they can get in touch with the Raza. Or at least give us some better coats and some matches or something.”

One’s mind was still fighting, like it was determined to believe everything was doomed. What if they ate all the fish in that pond to extinction and had none left? What if the weather got worse and they couldn’t get a fire to light again? And what about when they ran out of powder from the bullets? What if in leaving the cliff to try and find the station they just got lost in the snow again and died of hypothermia? But he tried to push those thoughts away. Three was just trying to give him hope, what little he could find – and One needed to cling to those threads too, despite their flaws, or he was going to lose himself to misery and hopelessness.

Apparently seeing the distressed expression on his face, Three shuffled closer, and put an arm around One’s shoulders. “We’ll be okay,” he said as he rubbed back and forth.

One nodded, feeling even warmer where Three’s arm touched him. “Yeah,” he said, trying to believe it. “Thanks…”

Three just smiled a little.

“We’re not alone, either,” he said. “We’ve got each other. And you know what – there’s definitely worse company to have on a godforsaken ice ball of a planet.”

One looked at him, kind of baffled to hear that. “Really?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” Three said. “Can you imagine being stuck in this place with _Four?_ I’d’ve died of boredom before we even found this cave!”

One laughed heartily. “Right… you wouldn’t exactly be able to pass the time with some good conversation.”

“Exactly!” Three rolled his eyes. “At least you and me can get into some kind of argument if we get bored.”

One snickered.

“Five’d be the opposite problem,” Three said. “She’d drive you up the wall with all her chatter. Not that I’ve got anything against the kid, but she is quite the little chatterbox when she gets going. And all that tech talk gives me a headache.”

“I guess I kinda see what you mean,” One admitted, though he felt a little mean saying it.

“Two’d probably be alright,” Three went on. “Six – oh, god, he’d be a nightmare. He’d just get all gloomy and hopeless… I mean, kinda like this, I guess, except _way_ worse. He’d insist on blaming himself for everyone that ever got hurt in the galaxy, and just drag everyone else into a depressive slump along with him.” Three rolled his eyes, making One chuckle a little. “The android’d probably get on your nerves, too, being all overly cheerful and peppy about everything when she doesn’t even have to worry about dying of cold or starving. So… yeah, you’re definitely not last on the list.”

One chortled. “Thanks, I guess.”

“And I’m obviously the best,” Three finished cockily. “So count yourself lucky, Pretty Boy.”

Laughing, One said, “Of course… I’m so incredibly lucky.”

Three grinned at him. “You know it,” he said.

He stayed there next to One for a little bit longer, rubbing his shoulder comfortingly, before shifting away again.

They both eventually started getting tired. But neither really wanted to move away from the fire and back into the cold cave.

Eventually, Three popped inside to see how bad it was.

“It’s a lot warmer than it was,” he said. “But it’s still kinda sucky compared to out here.”

One thought for a second. “Do you think we can… try and move the fire closer to the cave entrance?” he suggested. “Then it might heat up a bit more and keep it warmer while we sleep.”

Three considered that. “Worth a try, I guess,” he said.

So using some of the other sticks lying around, they worked together to try and push the campfire closer to the cave entrance, without jostling the pile of sticks enough to put it out. It wasn’t the easiest task, but luckily they didn’t have too far to move it before it was fairly close to the cave mouth, while still leaving room to get inside. Three told One to go in first, and then he moved the fire across slightly more, so it was even more directly in front of the cave. One was worried about him catching on fire himself when he tried to get in, but he just about managed to slip past without getting too singed.

“There we go,” Three said, looking pleased. “A lot warmer.”

One nodded. It wasn’t as good as being right beside the fire of course, and the blaze was starting to die a little bit, but it was definitely better than had been last night.

“It’ll go down fairly soon,” Three said. “But at least it should help with getting to sleep.”

So they both settled down on the floor, nearer to the cave entrance than last time so they could make the most of the fire’s heat. And even though he was pretty warm now, One couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. Because there was no need for them to share body heat this time.

But after a few moments of lying there, Three said, “Well?”

One opened his eyes and looked at him in confusion, seeing Three’s impatient face lit with the deep orange glow of the dim firelight. “What?”

“What’re you doing over there?”

One kept frowning. “Sleeping…”

“Exactly! So get over here!”

One stared at him. “But… I thought…”

“It may be warm at the moment, Pretty Boy, but as soon as that fire goes out, you’re gonna be right back to your normal freezing self. I don’t want you waking me up in a few hours when you need to steal my body heat again.”

One smiled sheepishly. “I guess you have a point…”

“I know I do, so get over here.”

With a slight chuckle, One obeyed, closing the small gap between them. Three instantly slipped his arms inside his jacket, which One had open over his own, wrapping him up warmly and pulling One’s body firmly against his. One felt a pang inside, another rush of those pleasant warm tingly sensations spreading through him.

“See – you’re already colder than you were,” Three said, his face only a couple of inches away from One’s, and still lit with that warm golden glow.

One smiled sheepishly, relaxing easily into Three’s embrace. He couldn’t deny, he was really glad there was still a reason for this to happen. It was… pretty nice.

Warm and cosy in Three’s arms next to the fire, he was soon fast asleep.

When One woke up, it was a lot colder than when he’d fallen asleep – but he was still pretty warm in Three’s arms. He realised after a second that Three’s hands had, at some stage, slipped down and under the hem of both his jacket and his T-shirt, and were resting on his bare back. And, on top of that, at some point in the night, One’s leg had apparently decided to slip itself in between Three’s. And that combination gave One the biggest shiver yet.

He tried not to move, hoping Three would stay asleep so he could keep enjoying it. And it worked for quite a while. He could feel Three’s hands shifting a little on his back as he moved, and it made his hair stand up on end. His breath tickled One’s cheek.

But eventually Three started to stir. He gave a little sigh as he did, hands moving on One’s back again – and then, as Three realised where they were, sliding quickly out from under his clothes. One felt a stab of disappointment. But he shook it off, and tried to act like he was just waking up too, slowly shifting and moving a little away from Three, blinking his eyes open.

When they could see each other, Three smiled a little.

“Mornin’,” he said.

“Morning,” One replied.

“That was actually a pretty good sleep,” Three said, taking his arms back entirely and stretching.

One nodded. It really had been. “The fire definitely helped.”

“Yeah,” Three agreed. “You’re not even some kind of subzero temperature at the moment.”

One chuckled. “Not yet.”

Three rolled his eyes, making One laugh more earnestly. They both sat up and stretched and rubbed their sore muscles.

“Still not the most fun sleeping on the rock-hard ground though,” Three said grumpily. “Hope those idiots find us soon.”

The day was rather similar to the one before. After getting up and relieving themselves, and checking One’s leg – which was healing nicely, though still quite bruised and sore –, they went back out towards the pond, searching for firewood as they went. The previous night’s fire had of course died at some point in the night like they’d known it would, and it was starting to get harder to find wood as they’d already used a lot of the nearby sources up. They were probably going to have to start going further afield, or actually breaking branches off the trees.

One insisted on giving Three his jacket back to start with, as he was warm enough from all the night-cuddling by the fire. Three told him it was pointless because One was going to need it again in a couple of hours anyway. But One wouldn’t take no for an answer this time.

They soon reached the fish pond, and Three located the spot where they’d shot through yesterday and kicked out the thin layer of ice that had reformed over it. Then they sat down, forced themselves to have a few painful handfuls of ice water to drink, and went back to work.

It was just as tedious and mind-numbing as it had been before. And though One tried to hide his shivering as he got colder and colder, Three noticed soon enough. He sighed in amused exasperation, as he started to take his jacket off. But One stopped him desperately. He really was worried Three was going to get hypothermia if he kept this up. He may have been naturally warmer than One, but he wasn’t invulnerable to cold, much as Three might want to think he was. He was almost certainly just being tough and macho and hiding how cold he really felt, and One didn’t want him to actually get sick. He… well, he needed him.

“Well, I can’t just let you freeze to death either!” Three cried helplessly.

“I’ll b-be f-f-fine,” One stuttered.

“Oh, yeah, you sound totally fine.” Three growled in annoyance. “Come here, you scrawny little dumbass.”

One looked at him in confusion, but Three kept beckoning until One started shuffling towards him. When he was close enough, Three leaned over and wrapped his arms around his waist, and then pulled One over into his lap. One froze slightly in confused shock. Three shuffled around a little to adjust himself, then settled down with One sitting on his crossed legs, both facing forward. Three wrapped his arms around One, pulling him back to rest against his chest.

“There,” Three said. “Now I’ve still got my jacket, but you’re not going to freeze. Happy?”

One was. More than he wanted to admit.

“Yeah,” he murmured embarrassedly.

“Good,” Three said.

He carried on fishing as best he could with One sitting in his lap, reaching his arms round either side of him. It meant One was pretty much being cuddled by him constantly and he was not complaining about that. One tried to keep fishing too, at first, but he mostly just ended up blocking Three’s view when he did, so in the end the job largely fell on Three, while One just sat there being cradled in his arms. He felt a little bad, but it was also really nice, feeling Three’s surprisingly warm chest against his back, leaning his head back into the crook of Three’s neck, Three’s chin resting on One’s shoulder as he leaned forward to watch the pond. One definitely liked it too much. But it was practical as well as enjoyable, so he had no reason to make himself stop it.

After a while, Three sat back a little with a satisfied noise as he surveyed the pile of fish he’d accumulated.

“Should tide us over,” he said contentedly, as he settled his arms down around One’s waist. One rested his on top of them before his brain computed that that might be a little too much of an affectionate gesture for him and Three. But Three didn’t comment, or move.

“Yeah,” One agreed. A little sheepishly, he added, “Thanks.”

He felt Three’s rumbling laugh through his back. “No problem, Pretty Boy.”

They sat there a little while longer, Three’s arms still wrapped around One. One started to feel awkward and like he should get up, but also he really didn’t want to.

Eventually, though, Three huffed as he started to get to his feet, hauling One up with him.

“Well, we’d better get moving,” he said, arms still around One to keep him steady as he stood up. Once they were both standing, they dropped away. “Still need more firewood.”

One turned around and nodded. “Right.”

Three gave him a curious look. “How cold are you now?”

Before One could answer, he put a hand on his face, then sighed.

“Still pretty cold, of course. Or at least, your face is. Maybe I need to start checking other parts of you.”

One tried to ignore the slight thrill that went through him at that implication.

“The rest of me’s not as bad,” he said.

Three nodded, looking a little relieved. “See, if you had a beard, maybe you wouldn’t have such a cold face all the time,” he said sagely, scrubbing his fingers over the scruff on his chin. “My chin is nice and warm right now.”

At those words, One found himself uncontrollably thinking about how nice that would be – having all that hair to keep his face warm in this weather. He was starting to get a little stubbly, from not shaving for a few days, but it still wasn’t close to a real beard – to Three’s beard. Not that he had a full beard, of course, more like a goatee – but it was still a lot more than One had. And One also couldn’t help thinking about how Three’s beard could warm _his_ face up too…

He slapped that thought away before it ran its insane course.

“Maybe I’ll grow one if we’re here long enough,” he said in the end.

Three gave a short laugh. “Right. Not much else to do around here except grow hair.”

One snorted.

“Anyway,” Three said, smirking a little. “D’you wanna take the fish back to the cave while I go further out and look for a bit more wood?”

“You’re not gonna get lost, right?” One said, trying for stern but mostly sounding anxious.

Three grinned, but in a soft, reassuring way. “Won’t go far from the wall. Cross my heart.”

One nodded, surprised at the amount of relief he felt.

Three leaned down to gather up the fish and pass them over to One, and then One started to head back to the cave while Three continued further past the pond to look for more firewood.

Once One got back, he set the fish down in the snow. Then he started to bring out their current supply of firewood, stacking that up near the fish. Once he’d done that, he prepared even further by getting out his gun and taking out a bullet, then using Three’s technique of bashing it with the handle until the case cracked open.

Then the only thing left to do was wait for Three to get back. Thankfully, he didn’t take too long.

“Hey,” he greeted One as he wandered over with an armful of sticks. “Nice job,” he added, nodding to the firewood pile One had made.

He started adding the new additions, and once he had, they sprinkled on the propellant from One’s bullet. And after another few hours of battling with the wood and gunpowder and wind, including another trip to get wood after some of it was burnt in their first attempts, they were in business again, sitting next to another big fire and roasting fish for dinner. As he and Three ate and chatted and relaxed, and watching the warm glow of the firelight flickering across Three’s laughing face, One had to admit… if it weren’t for the bitter cold and the lack of food and the mind-numbing repetition, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they were stuck here forever.

When night fell, they repeated their strategy from last night, keeping the fire alive close to the entrance of the cave so that it would help keep it warmer. They had built it closer to start with this time to avoid having to try and move it so far, and after One was in Three pushed it across further before squeezing around it to get in. He lay down in his usual spot, and One immediately started shuffling over to him for their nightly warmth-sharing. Then he froze when Three gave him an amused look.

“Eager, are we, Pretty Boy?”

One felt a flood of embarrassment, quickly moving away again.

“I… I thought… Last night, you said…”

Three cut him off by laughing affectionately. “You’re so easy,” he said, grinning. “I’m just messing. Come on.”

He leaned forward to grab One around the waist and pull him closer once more, until he could slip his arms around him like he usually did, pressing their bodies together.

“Jerk,” One muttered, but it was hard to stay too annoyed when he was snuggled up in Three’s warm embrace.

“That’s me,” Three confirmed with a chuckle.

They lay there for a little while, slowly getting more relaxed and ready for sleep.

“Hey, One?” Three said. His voice sounded a little amused, which made One slightly nervous.

“Yeah?”

“Just wondering… any change of heart on that skin-on-skin idea yet?”

One’s stomach lurched. “Uhh…”

Before he could figure out whether Three was joking, or come up with any sort of response either way, he heard Three snickering in his ear.

“Come _on_ ,” he said, almost like he was pleading, except he was still audibly holding back his laughter. “I’m up for it if you are! It’ll be so nice and warm!”

One was still utterly lost for words, as well as still trying really hard to focus on keeping his body’s uncontrollable reactions to Three’s words as under control as possible. Which wasn’t much. It felt like his whole body was buzzing.

Three was just chortling away heartily.

“We can build up to the full experience if you’re self-conscious,” he said between snickers. “Start with just our shirts off and see how that goes?”

One thanked the stars that Three wasn’t expecting him to answer – that he just seemed to be amusing himself by making One awkward. But One was more awkward than he could know, for reasons a lot more complicated than he even understood.

“Could even be fun – you never know,” Three went on smirkily. “Probably the most action we’re gonna get down here.”

“Yeah, yeah…” One finally managed to mutter, with weak sarcasm.

“Aww, is that a no? Damn… I was looking forward to it!”

One rolled his eyes, even though Three couldn’t see.

“Jackass,” he grumbled. He really, really hated the part of him that wished Three wasn’t joking.

Three laughed some more.

“You’re so much fun to tease,” he chuckled.

One just sighed half-heartedly.

After a few more moments, Three said, “In all seriousness, though, if it did really come to that and that was the only way we might not freeze, I don’t have a problem.”

Despite the assurance that he was serious, One could still hear the cheeky smile in his voice. He swallowed, and hoped it wasn’t audible.

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t,” was all he could think to say. And he hoped that lie wasn’t audible either.

This time, they seemed to have changed positions even more than usual in the night. Three had, at some point, rolled a little onto his back; One had gone with him, and that left them in what seemed like an even more intimate position than any so far – with One lying half on top of Three, arms tucked up by his shoulders, right leg over his, Three’s arms still locked around One’s back. Three’s chin was resting lightly on the top of One’s head, his breath ruffling his hair. One’s hand was brushing against Three’s cheek.

One let out a soft, highly comfortable sigh before he could stop himself. And to his horror, Three, already awake, gave an answering chuckle.

“Hey there, Mr. Snuggly,” he said teasingly.

One gulped, froze for the first half-second, then frantically started trying to move away – but Three kept his arms locked tight around him, not letting him escape.

“Hey – I didn’t say you could go,” he complained.

One kept squirming awkwardly for a few moments, before giving up with a huff. Three was not a weak man.

“You’re like a nice warm blanket,” Three said almost wistfully, rubbing his hands a little on One’s back and making his own sound of comfort.

One felt yet another rush of that thrumming feeling racing throughout his entire body where it touched Three – especially where the hands were stroking his back. God, he wished Three had any idea what he was doing to him. He wished he had a proper idea himself.

“Three…” One murmured. But he wasn’t really sure what he was going to say after that.

“Shhh,” Three said, wrapping his arms even tighter. “You’re finally warm for once and I’m gonna make the most of it.”

One thought it best not to point out that the reason he was warm probably had something to do with the fact that he was undoubtedly blushing all over his entire body.

But, well… If Three didn’t want him to get off, One might as well let himself enjoy it too. So he stopped struggling and let himself relax into Three’s warm body. Three made a soft, pleased sound as he did, and it made something inside One jump with pleasure.

They stayed like that for quite a while. One’s awkwardness slowly started to fade as he got more and more comfy and content, lying across Three’s chest. His right hand rested on Three’s shoulder, and his left was curled up by his neck. His right leg was still between Three’s legs. And his head was tucked under Three’s chin. It was unbelievably comfortable.

They both started to drop in and out of sleep again as they lay there. In the end, what finally got them to wake up properly was the gnawing pain of hunger in their stomachs. They could both hear each other’s growling angrily, almost alternating like they were having a conversation. Three sighed.

“Guess we’d better get some more food,” he said, sounding decidedly reluctant.

“Yeah,” One said. And he couldn’t keep the reluctance out of his tone either.

They didn’t move for another second, and then One slowly started to get up, hoping he didn’t look red in the face. He sat up cross-legged next to Three, rubbing at his eyes. After another few moments, Three heavily pushed himself up on his elbows, and then eventually into a sitting position.

“How’s your leg doing?” he asked One.

One rolled up his trouser leg to have a look. And it was looking pretty good. Still quite bruised, but the cuts were all scabbing over well.

“Nice,” Three said approvingly. “Looks much better. You’ll be back to normal in no time.”

“Yeah,” One said, smiling a little. “As long as the others find us before we both get hypothermia. Then everything’ll be great.”

Three chuckled. “Right.”

It was another samey day in their new (hopefully temporary) lives on the ice planet. They gathered firewood as they headed out to the pond. And then they sat there and fished. After only a few minutes, Three sighed a little and gestured to his lap, and One, a touch awkward but more than happy to oblige, came closer and sat himself between his legs, within Three’s warm embrace once again. He still found that a good deal more enjoyable than he probably should.

It wasn’t such a good day for fishing, by the looks of it. They were barely seeing any fish at all, and then Three still had to try and catch them in the brief glimpses they did get. Seemed like they were going to be there for a while.

After a few hours, even being wrapped up by Three wasn’t helping much with One’s temperature problem. It felt like the prolonged exposure to cold was really starting to affect him in the long term. He didn’t feel like he should be overly cold at that moment and yet he was unable to stop shivering, like the cold had just seeped right down to his bones and was refusing to shift.

It was more than a little worrying. What if he was actually starting to get hypothermia or something?

Three seemed to notice eventually and peered round to look at One, frowning.

“Are you still that cold?” he asked.

“I g-guess,” One stuttered. “It just… f-feels like I c-can’t get warm. Like the c-cold is… p-part of me now…”

Three’s expression grew more concerned. After a second, he admitted, “I kinda know how you feel.”

One turned to look at him, now frowning himself.

“You do?”

Three nodded, and One noticed that his hands were shaking a little.

They both just sat there for a bit, worries growing.

Then Three rubbed his hands together. “Well, hey, who said we couldn’t get warm? We’ve barely even tried!”

One swallowed, involuntarily thinking back to that whole skin-to-skin idea…

Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be what Three had in mind right now.

_Unfortunately?_

Before he could follow that train of thought through, Three started shifting and turning One by his shoulders until he put in some of his own effort, ultimately doing a full 180 to face Three while still essentially sitting in his lap. Not sure what to do with his legs, he had ended up bending them around Three’s waist, putting their bodies about as close as was possible.

“Now let’s see if we can’t shift some of that cold,” Three said, grinning a little.

And before One could react – not that he would’ve wanted to stop him –, Three pulled One in close and hugged him tightly, both arms around his back. One swallowed nervously, but followed his lead and wrapped his arms around Three too. Three, his chin resting on One’s shoulder, started firmly rubbing his back, trying to kneed warmth into him, and it started to work – but mostly due to that extremely distracting tingly heat One now entirely associated with Three’s touch. It blossomed from deep inside him, somehow seeming to persist despite the cold, and slowly started to spread outwards, filling the rest of his body and out to his skin, until One was trembling in a much different way. Rather than cold, he was full of this kind of buzzing warmth that made it impossible to even think the word cold. Sure, it probably wasn’t real – he probably was still almost as cold in reality but… if this was enough to keep him going, then it had to be better than nothing.

“See,” Three said, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Don’t you feel warmer already?”

One really was starting to wonder… Did Three actually know exactly what effect he was having on him? Was he in fact deliberately using that knowing it’d help One feel warmer? And even more importantly – was he feeling that way himself too, from One’s touch, and using it to help himself warm up as well?

“And hey, if this isn’t warm enough, we know what the next step is, don’t we?” He could hear Three’s grin. “If we’re both really that cold we might just have to give it a try, huh?”

A little shiver went down One’s spine. And it wasn’t just from the short hairs of Three’s beard tickling his neck in a way that felt unacceptably nice.

“Do you just wanna get naked with me?” One said before his half-frozen, half-confused tingly brain had got itself together enough to realise that was a very insane thing to say to Three.

“I’m just trying to make sure we don’t freeze to death here, Pretty Boy,” Three said, but he still sounded decidedly smirky. “If that happens to involve getting naked with you then I guess that’s what we’ll have to do. And you better suck it up, because _I_ don’t want to die of hypothermia because you refused to cooperate.”

One swallowed. That tingly buzzy feeling was growing more and more intense inside him, like a fire igniting and blazing in the pit of his stomach. He struggled to fight down a bunch more really stupid things his brain wanted him to say, eventually settling on something that wasn’t too bad.

“I’ll cooperate.”

“Good,” Three said, satisfied. “So we know what we’re doing later, then, if we still can’t get warm.”

One cursed the fact that he already felt loads warmer thanks to Three’s body pressing against his. And unfortunately he couldn’t even try and hide it when Three was still hugging him.

“You’ve already stopped shaking, though. And I’m feeling a lot better,” Three said, pulling back from the hug a little so One could see his mischievous smile. “So looks like we might not be at the naked stage quite yet.”

Of course Three had decided to look at him when he probably looked supremely disappointed. Three didn’t say anything, but he did start grinning more.

“Maybe next time, huh?”

One didn’t even trust himself to speak that time.

“Anyway,” Three said, starting to turn One around in his lap again, “I need to get back to fishing or we’re gonna have barely anything for dinner today. So I hope you’ve warmed up enough.”

“I have,” One said automatically.

“Good. Me too,” Three replied, and his voice sounded a little softer as he reached round One with his knife again, eyes back on the water.

It took a while, but eventually Three had accumulated a decent amount of fish. Not as many as the last few days, but enough that it should provide them a sufficient meal.

As they wandered back towards the cave with them, Three mused, “I’m gonna be so slim by the time we get back on the Raza. Thanks to this three-bony-fish-a-day diet.”

One thought of some rather rude things to say but decided he probably shouldn’t.

“I’m s-sure we’re b-both g-gonna have l-lost some weight,” he said instead. He was freezing again, now that the cuddling with Three was over. That really did do a remarkable amount to warm him up, more than simply from body heat alone. Three’s touch just… did things to him. And god knew he had no idea why, but he couldn’t really deny the evidence.

Three’s eyebrow raised.

“Hell, you’re gonna be skin and bones,” he said, looking at One with an usually worried expression. “You’re already scrawny enough anyway. Man… those fuckers better find us.”

Three really did seem worried about him. One felt a flutter of warmth in his chest.

When they got back to the cave, Three sat down and, before One could, he just patted his lap. One swallowed a little but wasn’t about to refuse. He sat down in Three’s lap, and Three rubbed his arms for a little while before getting to work on the fire. They eventually got it going again, the warmth even more of a relief than usual for the still freezing One. But they actually were starting to run low on bullets. One didn’t even want to think about what would happen then.

They couldn’t really do their usual cooking routine in this position, plus the fire should hopefully help One’s temperature issue – so Three helped shift him off to the side. That left them sitting next to each other again, but closer than they usually did, their legs touching. One wondered if it was intentional – if Three was doing it to help keep him warm, or if… if it was something else. But he could only speculate. Unless he wanted to mention his weird feelings to Three, but strangely that didn’t sound like a lot of fun.

After a little while, they were leaning back against the cliff wall together, that night’s dinner all cooked.

“How long have we been stuck here now?” Three asked curiously as they nibbled on their fish.

One thought about it for a second. “Think this is day five,” he answered.

“Five days, huh,” Three said musingly. “Why does it feel like about twenty?”

One laughed softly. “Guess time drags when you’re stuck on a freezing ice planet with nothing to do but fish and look for firewood and huddle for warmth.”

Three smirked. “That is what they say, right?”

“Pretty sure it is,” One joked back.

They both smiled as they fell into a peaceful quiet, eating their rest of their food and then just relaxing by the fire.

“You still cold?” Three asked.

One sighed a little and nodded. “Yeah.”

It was true – even though the fire was nice and warm, it only seemed to heat him up externally; inside, he still felt that unshiftable cold in his core, like ice in his veins.

Three frowned worriedly, and he put his hand down on One’s where it rested on his leg, before lifting it again to cup his cheek.

“You don’t feel too bad,” he said. “But I guess that’s just the heat of the fire on your skin.”

“Yeah, it’s inside that’s the problem,” One said mutedly.

Three looked concerned.

“What about you?” One asked.

“Still a little cold, yeah,” he replied. “But the fire helps.”

“Yeah, it definitely helps,” One agreed. That much was certainly true. It was a hell of a lot better than being out of the middle of this snow with nothing at all.

They fell silent again for a little while. Then One noticed Three digging into the snow to the side of him.

“What’re you doing?” he asked.

Three looked round and smiled slightly. “Just thought I’d make the most out of this snow.”

One frowned, still confused for a second. But as he watched, he saw Three starting to pile up some of the snow into a small mound. And then he started to get it.

He’d soon shaped out a rounded lower body, and then he dug both hands into the snow and came up with a lump, which he started to mould into a sphere with his hands before affixing it on top of the lower body. Then he did the same with a smaller handful of snow, sticking that on top for the head. He dug around under the snow again for a moment, coming up with a few small stones, which he pushed in for the face – two black eyes and a little trail for a mouth. He also found a small piece of stick for the nose. All done, Three smiled approvingly at his creation. In all, the finished snowman was about a foot tall, and it was pretty damn cute.

“No carrots, or a scarf or anything, but not bad for what we’ve got,” Three said happily, holding his snowy hands over the fire to warm them again. The snowman probably wouldn’t last too long next to it, sadly, but Three had done it on the side further from the fire so it should hopefully hold out for a little while before melting.

One sat thoughtfully for a few moments. Then he decided to copy Three’s idea. He started scooping up a pile of snow on the other side of him, then forming two balls for the upper body and head, and soon he had his own little snowman sitting next to him. He smiled.

“I would suggest a snowball fight next, but I don’t think either of us wants to get even more cold and damp,” Three said.

One chuckled a little. “Guess we probably ought to give the snow angels a miss, too.”

Three laughed. “Yeah. Both of those are only really fun if you have somewhere nice and warm to go back to afterwards with dry clothes and a mug of hot chocolate waiting.”

“Yeah. Slightly less cold cave in the same wet clothes and some freezing-cold ice water to drink if you get _really_ thirsty? Not so much.”

Three grinned.

The two of them sat there quietly for a bit longer, watching the gently flickering flames of the fire and listening to the crackling of the wood. Their legs were still touching, and so were their arms, now.

“So, One,” Three said in the end, giving him a slightly cryptic sideways look. “How cold are you feeling now?”

One looked back at him, feeling a nervous churning feeling in his gut as he took in the words, and the tone Three said them in. It sounded casual – but that was exactly how One knew it wasn’t. And then, when he thought about the words, they had a much deeper meaning.

Three had said earlier that if he and One were still really cold later… that they might just have to try that more drastic body heat sharing idea. One had no idea if he was serious. And he was going to make a fool of himself if he wasn’t. But… as he took Three’s words in, and looked at that cheeky glint in his eye, One knew there was only one thing he wanted to say.

“I’m still freezing,” he said.

Incidentally, he was still pretty shivery, even with the fire and Three right next to him. But even if he’d been completely toasty warm, he would’ve said the same thing.

Three’s subtle smirk grew, as did that sly twinkle in his eye.

“Oh yeah? As it happens, so am I.”

The words, and Three’s deep, seductive voice as he said them, sent another jolt through One, warmth immediately pooling in his abdomen, his heart rate picking up. Three had turned a little so he could look right at One, and One did the same, meeting Three’s gaze head on. The intensity of his expression made him a little nervous, but he held his gaze, Three’s light blue sparkling eyes staring into his.

“I guess we know what that means, huh,” Three said in a low voice.

One swallowed. “Yeah…”

Three turned away, but just for a second, evaluating the colour of the sky. A dark indigo, dotted by the white flakes of the ceaselessly falling snow.

“It’s getting quite late,” he said.

He turned back to One, lips still curved at the corners in that slight suggestive smile.

“It is,” One agreed.

They just looked at each other for a long, charged moment. They were still sitting right next to each other, legs pressed together, faces only a few inches apart. Three’s eyes gleamed with the light of the fire, his skin warm and golden with it. His mouth still curved at the corners in that smirk.

One was so lost in Three’s face he almost didn’t hear the sound of engines from above.

He noticed it first in Three’s expression as it changed to one of total incredulity, and then he looked away and up, at the sky ahead of them. One pulled himself out of the daze and looked, too, the engine noise finally reaching his ears. He and Three both stared in utter shock at the lights coming towards them as a shuttle descended out of the snow-filled clouds metres in front of their campfire. _Their_ shuttle. It was hard to tell because of the blinding lights, but they’d still recognise that shape anywhere. It was the Marauder.

“Are you seeing this?” Three asked.

“Yeah,” One said. “I am.”

They looked back at each other and both grinned.

“They found us. They actually found us, I can’t believe it.”

Three laughed in disbelief, hauling himself to his feet. As One clambered to his, he couldn’t deny there was a part of him that was confusingly upset. Of all the times for the Marauder to finally turn up to rescue them, it had to be right now. Right in _this_ minute of _this_ day. Perfectly ruining whatever moment he and Three were having. And now he may never know what might have happened if they hadn’t.

But he tried to shake away those conflicted feelings as he joined Three in waving the Marauder over, as it located a large enough clear area and came in to land.

“Gotta say, I really had my doubts about them finding us,” Three admitted, grinning unashamedly.

“Me too,” One said.

After a moment, Three turned to look at him, a hard-to-read expression on his face.

“It’s a shame we’ll never know whether our little idea would’ve helped warm us up, though,” he said.

One stared back, and he knew he wouldn’t have been able to wipe the disappointment from his face even if he’d wanted to. He still couldn’t tell whether Three’s face showed the same.

“Yeah,” he said. “It really is a shame.”

The fire blew out behind them as the Marauder landed a short distance away, leaving only the blinding lights of the shuttle itself to light up the empty, white landscape, the spectral shapes of the trees and the cliff behind them. A few seconds later, the doors of the Marauder opened, and out ran a host of familiar silhouettes. Two, Six, Four, even Five too. They ran straight towards their fellow crewmates.

“ _One! Three!”_ called Five frantically.

“You took your time!” Three yelled back, and they heard Five’s relieved, delighted laugh drift towards them.

A few moments later, she reached them and threw both her arms around One and Three at the same time, pulling them into a three-way hug. One and Three hugged her back. It was slightly awkward, though, as it meant One and Three kind of had to hug each other, too. But, One supposed, they’d done a hell of a lot more intimate things since they’d been stuck here. What was one more half-hug?

Besides… maybe it’d be the last one.

Two, Four and Six reached them as Five let them go, and they all patted One and Three welcomingly on the shoulders.

“I’m so glad you’re both okay,” Two said, her profound relief showing on her face.

“So are we,” Three said, grinning slightly. “Thought you guys weren’t coming.”

“We were starting to think we might not find you, either,” Five said, looking upset.

“How did you?” One wondered. “We were trying to use the fire to make smoke for a kind of signal, but I had no idea if that would even work through the snow, and with all the disruption of the sensors.”

“It did help, but more from the heat of the fire,” Five told them. “Me and the android managed to do some adjustments to the ship’s external sensors and boosted their sensitivity, so that they’d be able to detect much fainter heat signals even through the snow.”

One stared at her for a second, and then looked at Three in disbelief. That was almost exactly what he’d said they would do, when he was half-exaggerating about how the others would find some way to find them. One started laughing, and Three just looked smug as anything.

“How the hell did you do that?!” he demanded.

Three just smirked. “I keep trying to tell you, I’m amazing.”

One just laughed more. The others looked a little confused, not knowing the context, but after a second Five went on.

“It was still kind of like searching for a needle in a haystack,” she said. “And we might not have found you just from your body heat, so the fire was a big help.”

“We just kept searching outward from the station in different directions, because we knew you couldn’t have got too far,” Two said. “It took a while but finally we got lucky.”

“Glad we got here before you two killed each other,” Six added with a laugh.

One and Three looked at each other, and both their expressions mirrored each other’s sheepish amusement.

“Oh, yeah,” Three said, trying to keep his expression clear and not quite managing it. “It’s been such a pain…”

One badly smothered his own smile. “Yeah, it was the worst – being stuck here with _Three_ …”

Looking back at the others, One saw Two and Five both looking a little suspicious. But they didn’t voice their thoughts.

“Well, come on – let’s get you guys back to the ship,” Two said.

“Yeah, you must be absolutely freezing!” Five gasped. “You have to tell us everything that happened!”

Three chuckled, as he and One returned to the campfire just to pick up their guns and Three’s knife, which still had a few fish scales on it from skinning that night’s meal. He wiped it off on his trousers as they slid their guns into their holsters, and then tucked the knife back into his boot.

“Sure thing, kid, but can we get some nice hot coffee or something first?” he said over his shoulder.

Five grinned a little sheepishly. “Yeah, of course.”

Three then ducked back into the cave to grab Bubba, slinging it over his shoulder as he emerged again, and then the two of them wandered back over to the others.

As the six of them started to walk back to the Marauder, One couldn’t help one last look back at the cave, and their little campfire, the last thin plumes of smoke drifting upwards from the extinguished fire. Discarded fish bones littered the snow around where they’d been sitting, along with the charred sticks they’d used to roast their dinner on. Next to them, the two little snowmen they had made, sitting side by side in front of the fire just like they had done so many times. It had only been five days, but yet, as Three had said, it felt like so much longer. And that little freezing icy cave had been his and Three’s home for that time. Their own little world, just the two of them. Even though he would be really glad to get back on the ship and finally get some real warmth back in him – get back to normal life with the rest of the crew… there was definitely a part of him that would miss this place.

Something cold, hard and wet hit him in the back of the head, making One gasp and jump.

“You coming, Pretty Boy? Or did you wanna stay?”

One turned to see Three smirking at him from just outside the shuttle, with Two and Five a few steps behind him, looking shocked but close to laughing. Three was brushing snow off his hand.

One scowled, reaching up to feel the clump of snow on the back of his head, starting to slide down to his neck. He brushed it off quickly, already shivering more.

“I thought we agreed we weren’t doing a snowball fight?” he said irritably.

“Well, we’re going back to a warm ship, fresh clothes and hot drinks, now, aren’t we?” Three pointed out, with a sly grin.

One just glared more. Then, fast enough to catch Three by surprise, he crouched down, balled up a handful of snow and threw it back right at Three’s face. Three stood there in a stunned stupor for a moment, snow clinging to his face for a second before starting to drop off, while behind him Two and Five did start laughing this time, and One just smiled triumphantly.

“Good point,” he said, just a little smugly.

Three wiped the rest of the snow off, and then narrowed his eyes at One.

“Alright, I shoulda seen that coming,” he admitted.

One grinned. And a second later, he saw Three reluctantly starting to smile, too. It was kind of funny to think how something like that would have once led to a serious fight between the two of them. Now, it was the furthest thing from that. They both knew it was just harmless fun and screwing each other around. If anything, rather than a sign of hatred now, it was just an element of their friendship.

“So you coming or what? We can totally leave you here, if that’s what you want – I’m sure the others won’t have any objec–”

“Alright, alright, I’m coming,” One said, jogging a little to catch up.

Two, Five and Three headed into the Marauder, and One followed them. He cast one last glance back, and then the doors closed, and they took off.

A short time later, they were back on the Raza in warm, dry clothes, wrapped up in blankets and getting checked over in the infirmary while they drank their promised cups of piping hot coffee. One was still struggling with the shivers, not able to get warm, and as he looked at Three he couldn’t help wishing that he could join him under his blanket, maybe sit in his lap like they used to do by the pond. Three’s touch always warmed him up more than anything.

But obviously he was _not_ going to request that.

The android was scanning them both for signs of hypothermia or frostbite or any other health issues that might have arisen from their time on that ice planet. While she did, Three was telling the others their story.

“So there I was running after you guys and then suddenly I’m on the ground,” Three said, turning to give One a smirky look. “Turns out I tripped over a lump of moron.”

One rolled his eyes.

More seriously, Three went on, “One had fallen over a rock or something and banged up his leg. So we wouldn’t have caught up with you guys. Instead we just turned off in another direction and carried on as well as we could, hoping to lose Electus’ men, or at least make them lose interest.”

The android looked concerned. “I should take a look at your leg, too, One,” she said.

One nodded, and pulled his trouser leg up over the injury. The android started to examine the area. It was looking good, though, in One’s eyes – the cuts all on their way to healing, the bruising still fairly extensive but already fading from purples and blues to yellows and browns.

“Eventually, we heard the men falling away,” Three went on. “And it started getting dark, so we stopped by a tree to try and rest for a while. Didn’t manage any real sleep, of course, out there in the open. And – worst of all – we had to… huddle for warmth.”

He gave a theatrical shiver, which made the others laugh a little. One couldn’t help wondering how Three was going to deal with the rest of this story… Would he mention all the other ‘huddling for warmth’?

“I know, right? So gross… But anyway.” He gave One another little smirky side glance as he went on. “We rested for a bit, then carried on, then rested again… until eventually, we found some proper shelter – that cliff and the cave. So then we started looking for sticks to make fire, and we tried using the powder out of our bullets to help it along, but it was still a major pain in the ass. After a while we gave up and went to look for food, but that was a bust too. So we just went into the cave to sleep. Which was verging on impossible, between the cold and the hard floor, so in the end… we had to resort to using each other’s heat again to get warm enough.”

One swallowed a little, nervously. The others looked mildly amused at the image of him and Three huddling together in the cave, but they didn’t say anything or make fun of them, and Three was playing off the whole affair as a mild nuisance. One was just grateful Three hadn’t mentioned the full extent of the cuddling…

“The next day, we went looking for food again, and eventually found this pond with fish in it. So we used my knife and a sharpened stick, and sat there for ages trying to catch them. Eventually got some and took them back to the cave, and tried the fire again. And _finally_ we got it to catch. So I skinned the fish and One roasted them over the fire. That was pretty much our entire diet for the last three days – along with the ball-shrivellingly cold pond water, of course. Then we’d try and sleep on the rock-hard floor in the freezing cave, keeping the fire going outside to try and keep it a bit warmer.

“And… yeah. That was pretty much how our days went. Get up, look for firewood, catch fish at the pond, get a fire going, cook the fish, eat, sleep in the cave. And repeat, over and over, until you guys turned up. Not the most action-packed existence, but it got us through.”

As the rest of the crew took in the story, they looked surprised, intrigued – and definitely a little impressed, too.

“Sounds like you guys did a pretty good job at the wilderness survival,” Two said, with a little smirk.

“Hell yeah. We told that inhospitable ice ball who’s boss,” Three said, grinning cockily back.

As the crew all smiled at each other, the android turned to them from the monitors.

“One and Three’s core body temperatures are considerably lower than optimum, indicative of mild hypothermia,” she said. “But I can see no signs of more serious symptoms, or other issues such as frostbite. Provided we get their body temperatures up to normal levels, they will be fine. One’s leg is also healing well, and shows no signs of infection.”

One was more a little relieved, glad neither of them was going to get sick from that whole escapade. The others looked pleased too.

“I recommend that you both have a hot shower to help warm your cores,” the android said. “I will turn off any unnecessary systems and redirect as much power to the boiler as possible, as I know the water is often not the warmest.”

Three grinned widely at that news. “Wow, an actually hot shower? We should get stuck on deserted ice planets more often.”

One couldn’t deny, the idea of a hot shower for the first time in who knew how long sounded absolutely delightful.

“Other than that,” the android said, “I will check you both over again tomorrow, but for now, I think you can all get some sleep.”

Twenty minutes later and One was in his shower, letting the gloriously hot water fall over his shoulders and face. It felt amazing, the heat seeping right down to his bones and warming him inside and out. He only wished he could get more of his body under the stream at the same time, as as it was there were always parts of him that weren’t under the water and those parts remained unpleasantly chilly. But it was still a million times better than the average of the last five days.

After a bit, he gave in and just sat down on the floor of the cubicle, legs pulled up to his chest. That way he could get slightly more of him under the water at once. He stayed like that for a while, and lost himself in the water and the steam.

When he was done, wrapped in a towel and walking back into his bedroom, he was almost instantly shivering again. He quickly dried himself and got dressed, and then dived under the bed covers and curled up, trying to recover that wonderful warmth again. But it still seemed to disappear as soon as it came.

And as he lay there, cold and shivering under the covers, there was only one thought that kept coming back to him. One that he kept trying to ignore, but it wouldn’t leave him alone. And that, of course, was Three.

He’d only been by himself for an hour or so, but he still felt so alone. His quarters were just so big and empty – his bed in particular. For so long he’d had Three right there with him when he was going to sleep, cuddling him and talking a little before they drifted off. There when he’d wake up, too, still wrapped around him. And… he wanted that. He missed that.

He tried to tell himself it was just because he was cold and Three made him warm, but… he knew that wasn’t close to all of it. He liked having someone there. And it was more, even than that. He liked having _Three_ there.

Now, curled up alone in his bed, shivering and trying desperately to warm up by himself… It just wasn’t the same. He wanted Three’s body heat. He wanted to feel Three’s body against him, feel his arms wrapped around his back, holding him close. And he felt so weird when he remembered he was thinking these things about _Three_. With everything that had happened between them since they woke up on this ship (and, by all accounts, before that, too), it made absolutely no sense that he would feel this way about him now. But there it was.

One lay there for a long time, trying to work out his feelings and what he wanted. It was a real challenge to get his befuddled brain to sort it all out. But in the end, it boiled down to one thing, and the more he thought about it, the more he knew he just had to try and get it. He couldn’t stand the thought of going to sleep by himself – not until he’d at least found out whether it was at all a possibility that he didn’t have to. He wanted Three – and after everything that had happened, all the body heat sharing and the laughter and the smiles, the evenings sitting by the fire and talking, and what seemed very close to flirting at times, he thought Three might just want him too. And he had to give it a chance, even if Three might just laugh in his face.

So, screwing up his courage, One got up and went to Three’s quarters. A few seconds after he pressed the button, the door opened. Three gave him a surprised, curious look.

“Hey there, Pretty Boy,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

One stepped into the room, and Three closed the door before turning to look back at him. His expression was full of intrigue, wondering what he was going to do.

“I’ve just been thinking,” One said. “About… everything. The last five days – us being stuck in that place together, just trying to survive. Trying to find food and make fire, keeping each other warm, sitting by the fire and eating and talking… sleeping together in the cave. And then I thought about being back.”

One watched Three’s expression carefully. He just looked back curiously, confused at the moment.

“And I just realised… after all that… I really didn’t want to go to bed by myself.”

Three still looked a little taken aback, but his lips twitched in the first hint of a smile.

One’s nervousness was quickly mounting. But he went on, changing tack slightly.

“I had a hot shower, like the android said to,” he said. “But after I was out I got cold again almost straight away. So I got into bed and got under the covers and tried to warm up, but it just wasn’t working…”

Three was definitely starting to smile.

“And then… when I was lying there thinking about all that time in the cave… just us and the snow… All I could think about was how impossibly warm it was…”

It was a bit of a cover, to protect himself in case Three said no. But he also hoped as he looked at Three that he realised that. That he knew there was a lot more to it than just wanting to get warm.

And it seemed like Three was starting to get the message. His slightly smirky smile was growing, eyes twinkling with amusement and warmth.

“One… are you saying you want to steal my body heat again?” he asked. “Did I get that right?”

One swallowed a little, but nodded. “Yeah. You did.”

Three’s lips curved even more at the corners.

“I see… So you just want to use me for my body again, huh?”

His obvious amusement under the fake indignation clearly showed that he was joking, and One felt a surge of hope.

“Man, I never imagined you’d be such a pushy little attention-seeker, Pretty Boy…”

He over-exaggerated thinking about it for a bit, making One smile helplessly.

“I suppose… I can get on board with the idea,” he said, with apparent reluctance. “As long as you really need it.”

And he took hold of both One’s hands in his to check. One felt his breath catch in his throat. Three’s hands were a good deal warmer than his, and they stroked One’s thoughtfully, making his skin tingle.

“Yeah, as usual – you are still damn cold,” Three concluded, with a roll of his eyes. “Guess that means I don’t have much choice.”

And he pulled One closer and wrapped his arms around him. One wrapped his around Three in turn, hoping it wasn’t obvious how fast his heart was beating, or how ragged his breathing was. Three’s body was gloriously warm, as usual, and firm yet soft against One’s. His hands stroked up and down One’s back. They both looked right into each other’s eyes, faces now only a couple of inches apart. One felt the intensity deep in the pit of his stomach.

“You gonna start warming up again now we’re back on the ship, or were you always this cold all the time?” Three asked, looking exasperated.

One looked back at him, heart in his throat.

“I was always pretty cold,” he said.

Three sighed with absolutely no feeling. “Guess I’ve resigned myself to my fate then.”

As One stared at him, and Three’s amused face stared back, One swallowed. He knew what he was going to do next. He honestly didn’t have much choice.

“You know, my face is always the coldest,” he said.

Three looked yet more exasperated, and he lifted one hand to touch One’s cheek, making One shiver slightly.

“See, I told you you should grow a beard,” Three said. “Then you’d be totally fine.”

One gathered every ounce of courage.

“I could…” he said, “but I think I’d rather just use yours.”

Then, before he could chicken out, One surged forward, closing the tiny gap between them and crushing his lips to Three’s.

He felt Three suck in a little surprised breath – and then he squeezed One tightly to him as he kissed right back, with an instant passion that took all of One’s breath away. Their lips moved desperately and urgently, coming together and apart over and over as they both gasped for breath, clinging to each other and scrambling to try and pin down any last scraps of coherence left in their heads. All One could make sense of in his was the overwhelming happiness, at Three’s clear display that he felt it too, that he hadn’t just been joking and messing One around the whole time they were stuck on that planet. He really did like One, too.

One’s heart was pounding more and more as the kiss grew deeper. Three’s hand moved up to the back of One’s head, gripping and pressing with a little force to keep him right where he wanted him as he kissed him relentlessly, and the insistent force sent a thrill of pleasure down One’s spine. Three was so into this and it was amazing. One felt a little helpless against him, Three’s strong body and his other arm locked tight around One’s back, his soft, eager lips capturing One’s and his tongue pressing into One’s mouth and entangling with his. One had no chance of breathing but he didn’t care in the slightest. His whole body was on fire, warmer than he could remember being, and he kept his arms firmly around Three’s back, pressing into him needily. He kissed Three with the same urgency, the same ardour, until he could hear Three’s ragged attempts at breathing just as loudly as his own.

When they finally stopped, it was mostly because both of them were starting to get light-headed. They just stood there for a moment, still wrapped in each other’s arms and leaning heavily on each other, foreheads together and breathing hard.

After a long moment, as One was still trying to get his breath back, Three pulled his head back a little so they could see each other. His face was as flushed with colour as One thought his own probably was, mouth open a little as he panted, but his eyes were bright with pleasure and happiness. His lips curved as he took in the still-dazed look on One’s face.

“Warm now?” he asked, voice beautifully low and rough.

One swallowed. “Oh yeah,” he replied breathlessly, with a weak grin.

Three chuckled.

“We should’ve done that from day one,” One added. “We wouldn’t have been the slightest bit cold.”

Three laughed again. “Yeah.” Lowering his voice again, lips curving in a seductive smirk, he went on, “With that and the skin-to-skin idea, we’d have been boiling.”

His tone and the suggestive look on his face sent a shiver of pleasure through One.

“Come to think of it… I could still be warmer,” One said, trying on a little cheeky smile as Three looked at him in amusement.

“Jeeze. So needy.” One chuckled. “Better get under the covers, then.”

Seeing One’s obvious dismay, Three chortled softly.

“One thing at a time, Pretty Boy,” he said with a cheeky grin. “We don’t wanna get ahead of ourselves, do we? Not when we haven’t tried all the other options.”

One rolled his eyes slightly, making Three chuckle more.

“Come on,” Three said, still smiling as he took a step backwards.

He started to draw One towards the bed, and they climbed under the covers together, Three pulling One back against his body as soon as they were settled. Their arms encircled each other and they rested with their foreheads and noses touching, just like they’d done in the cave. Three then wrapped his leg over One’s, nudging One’s leg back so that it ended up tucked between his. One shuddered a little, already feeling that warm knot in his belly.

“See? Not so bad, it is?” Three said in a soft voice.

One couldn’t help smiling.

“Yeah,” he said. “Could definitely be worse.”

Three smiled back.

As they lay there, wrapped up tightly together under Three’s blankets, breath tickling each other’s skin, One felt a warm glow of happiness in his chest. This just felt so right.

“I thought this was good in the cave,” he muttered. “In an actual bed, it’s incredible.”

Three laughed softly. “Take it I should get used to you stealing my bed, then?” he said in amusement.

“Probably,” One admitted, making Three laugh again.

“I guess I can live with that,” he said softly.

One smiled. “Good.”

After looking at each other for another moment, Three smiled affectionately and moved his hand to the back of One’s head again, gently pressing him forward and kissing him. The tenderness of this kiss after the fire of the last one made One’s insides clench, his heart aching. Three’s fingers slid through his hair, his other hand firm on One’s lower back. One’s hands trembled slightly as he held them against Three, the solid feeling of his body helping to keep One from losing himself entirely. But he was feeling himself melting more and more into the other man, and he was starting to find that he had nothing whatsoever against it.

“Who would’ve ever thought we’d end up like this, after you tripped me up on that awful planet?” Three murmured against One’s lips, between kisses.

When he could bring himself to break away for long enough, One panted in reply, “Even more glad I did now.”

Three chuckled. “Bastard.”

“Don’t see you complaining anymore,” One returned, swallowing as Three kissed along his jaw.

Three just grinned. “Well… maybe it was worth it.”

Still trembling a little, his skin tingling all over, One managed one last sentence. “It was definitely worth it.”

And then Three, smiling, turned his head again and captured his lips once more. His arms tightened around One, pressing their bodies even tighter together, and he kissed him deep and ardent until One was pretty sure he had melted altogether.

He still couldn’t believe how perfect this felt. That kissing Three would feel so right. But it did. In some ways, it felt more right than anything else had since waking up on this ship. And if he was ever sure of anything, it was that he never, ever wanted it to stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed that fluffy little adventure with the boys ^_^ I definitely want to do more pure fluff stories ❤
> 
> (P.S. The amount of times my brain tried to add sex to this and I had to tell it, ‘No, dammit, we’re doing fluff this time!’ xD)  
> (P.P.S. I am considering doing a mini bonus snippet for this at some stage to see how the others react when they find out about the developments hehe)


End file.
